California Files Antitrust Lawsuit Against Amazon (nytimes.com) 31
California's attorney general filed an antitrust lawsuit against Amazon on Wednesday, claiming the retailer stifles competition and increases the prices consumers pay across the internet. The New York Times: The suit is limited to California, where officials said Amazon had around 25 million customers, but if it succeeds it could have a broad impact across the country. The lawsuit largely focuses on the way Amazon penalizes sellers for listing products at lower prices on other websites. If Amazon spots a product listed for cheaper on a competitor's website, it often will remove important buttons like "Buy Now" and "Add to Cart" from a product listing page. Those buttons are a major driver of sales for companies selling though Amazon, and losing them can quickly hurt their businesses. That creates a dilemma for marketplace sellers. At times, they can offer products for lower prices on sites other than Amazon because the cost of using those sites can be lower. But because Amazon is by far the largest online retailer, the sellers would rather raise their prices on other sites than risk losing their sales on Amazon, the complaint said, citing interviews with sellers, competitors and industry consultants.
How else is a guy gonna ride to space with Captain (Score:1)
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Re:How else is a guy gonna ride to space with Capt (Score:5, Interesting)
He's a nice guy. A few years back we were doing a worldwide scavenger hunt and we named our team "Team Shatner" and said he could join, but if he did, he couldn't be captain. He called our bluff and we let him be captain.
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Here we go.... (Score:1)
Now IMO, *this* is one of your valid reasons to go after Amazon. Much more sensible than things like complaining about a monopoly on robot vacuum cleaners with a Roomba buyout or what-not.
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Much more sensible than things like complaining about a monopoly on robot vacuum cleaners with a Roomba buyout or what-not.
The objection is that amazon has lots of PII already, and abuses it, and iRobot has lots of PII, and also abuses it. So putting the two together means abuse plus abuse.
re: PII (Score:2)
It doesn't work like that.
Most PII iRobot has on people is just going to duplicate what Amazon has. At best, it gives them a couple of databases to compare to try to weed out errors.
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That's not the situation at all though.
Amazon is letting people sell in their store, but that doesn't mean they're allowed to demand the people not sell in OTHER stores too at lower prices. If Amazon wants that much control over the product sales and pricing, it need to buy out those companies and make them Amazon branded products.
Same problem with books (Score:5, Insightful)
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Well, it was basically Amazon vs. Everyone Else back in the 2010s when the ebook wars were raging. And when Everyone Else got together to put together a nice deal for publishers, Amazon ran to the DOJ and got Everyone Else fined for collusion.
End resul
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Virtually all publishers insist on exclusivity. Note that Amazon does not insist on exclusivity
as a retailer. Books that are published by somebody else (Simon & Schuster, Haper Collins,
whoever) are sold by Amazon and also sold in other book stores, as you would expect. This
is normal and has not changed and is very unlikely to change any time soon. Relax.
Amazon only does the exclusivity thing if you are using them as the publisher (which I do
not recommend). And yes
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> Amazon decides they want to pay an author for their work, or she can "go wide" and sell her
> books on other stores like Barns and Noble
There's a third option. She could go through the nightmarish process of convincing an actual
publisher, to look at her book(s). This is a difficult and time consuming process, but if it is
completed successfully, it generally results in *much* higher book sales, because publ
Not sure about that second claim. (Score:1)
other sellers to list things on their site, but that puts them in a position of control;
it's other retail websites that they see as competition, presumably, and maybe to a
lesser extent major brick-and-mortar retail chains. Not that I'd be sad to see eBay
die, but it would be nice if there were some other alternative to Amazon, just
on principle. Competition is good, because it creates accountability, and in
particular it
Amazon prices (Score:5, Interesting)
I've noticed that I get a higher price on my own system in my own account. I wanted to show my nephew an item I was thinking of buying. Exact same item was 20% less expensive using his account, on his system, from his internet. I checked again on my system when I got home, it was the same (higher) price I'd originally seen.
As a result of that, Amazon is my business of last, absolute last (I'd rather do without) resort when I must buy something and they are the only place. Even Kindel books, I get other places and encode for Kindel or HTML.
Re:Amazon prices (Score:4, Informative)
I noticed this too.. and just recently noticed this with the last set of flights I needed to purchase. Sure enough, connecting from a computer I don't normally use that wasn't logged into any of my accounts got the same flight for $250 cheaper per flight.. checked it again on my cell phone and back to same price as my home computer..
Amazon's pricing has been crap lately.. and so many brands disappeared from it.. I am sick of other Amazon problems like - ordering a 'genuine' replacement battery or part and the Chinese knock-off shows up.. despite paying the price similar to genuine. Amazon was awesome around 5 years ago.. and I think it's just gone downhill from there and spread itself thin. It seems to me like all the Wallstreet cronies had a plan of Amazon crushing retail... only to have lots of the little retail online and brick and mortar competitors rise to the challenge while Amazon wanted to increase margins..
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Like so many things, the pricing is less about how much a thing should cost, and more about how much they can get away with charging.
But with this company in particular, they have access to so much of your data, they can probably surmise you have more money than your nephew and set your price accordingly.
Obvious conflict of interest. (Score:2)
Honestly I am starting to think all third party merchants should be required to just sell wholesale to Amazon as the retailer then there is only Amazon's retail price. The merchants make their wholesale profit without competition from Amazon itself, just each other.
Imagine going into a Walmart and you go to the battery section and there are 20 little kiosks all selling AA batteries, but one of those is
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Basically they're booking revenue and reducing inventory, even though they haven't really sold anything.
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There's all sorts of shady stuff going on with their inventory. I bought a book once that said "1 Copy left." Went on a few minutes later, looked at the same book, it said "10 copies left."
good! (Score:2)